The origins of bowling cannot be easily traced and some of its prior titles such as lawn bowling and ten pins are just a few examples of the earlier origins of the sport. While some advances were initially made in the sport, one significant difficulty remained. Namely, the need to have a person resetting the pins after each ball was thrown. Not only did this slow the game tremendously but the increased manpower and costs involved virtually stalled the expansion of the sport to the majority of the purchasing public. With the invention of automatic pin setters the sport of bowling entered a new age and the sport experienced tremendous growth and popularity.
The proliferation of automatic pin setters and bowling alleys in general led to the need for other items including cover panels which were positioned in front of the automatic pin setting machines, between the machines and the bowler. The purpose of these cover panels was originally both for esthetics and to avoid the distractions of the movement of the pin setter. These cover panels quickly became the subject of invention as lights behind the cover panels were used to indicate the number of pins that had fallen and to provide a visual representation of the pins that were left standing. These cover panels and related devices evolve to include a number of features such as indicators for strikes, spares, whether the first ball of the frame had been thrown and eventually where the ball needed to placed in order to achieve a spare. Other signaling lights on the panel indicated the occurrence of a foul when the bowler slipped past the bowling alley foul line.
Other inventors turned their attention to the issue of esthetics. This resulted in the development of different colored panels and panels that provided attractive light displays on the occurrence of particular events such as a strike or a spare.
After the bowling industry went through this period of tremendous growth, there began to be a retrenching. No longer was walk in business which is commonly referred to as open bowling, sufficient to add significant financial support to the various bowling alleys. Since the alleys could not count on walk in business, they directed their effort to the further development of bowling leagues. These leagues, although usually given a preferential rate were consistent customers and allowed for inter and intraleague competitions, company leagues and the like. Today, a successful bowling alley is one that has the facilities to attract the most league players. Accordingly, bowling alleys have gone out of their way to provide an environment that the leagues feel comfortable with. This generally includes, among other things league recognition which is accomplished by signs as you walk into the establishment as well as diagrams of league standings and the like.
While variations to the cover panels have been made to make them more esthetically pleasing, actually personalizing such cover panels for the various bowling leagues that a bowling alley may serve would require frequent panel changes which would presently be too time consuming. Most cover panels are approximately 51/2 feet long and 3 feet high. Although they may be made of a plastic material and, therefore may not be very heavy, they tend to bend and with present installations at least two people are required to remove and replace the panels. Presently the cover panels are bolted to a support in front of the pin setting machine. Due to the fact that multiple alleys ar adjacent to each other the cover panels are also adjacent to each other, end to end, with little room between adjacent panels. Therefore, removing and replacing a panel is quite difficult as one attempts to maneuver these large panels around the adjacent panels. Where a particular league takes up 20 lanes it will be appreciated that even a twenty minute period to change the cover panel on each lane would result in over 61/2 hours of work in order to install personalized cover panels.
Efforts by some to change the cover panel system have resulted in totally free standing systems which are moved closer to the bowler in order to provide greater access to the cover panel detaching mechanisms. For example, in one invention the cover panel pivots centrally, which would be impossible with the present placement due to interference from the pin setting machine. Of course the movement of the cover panel toward the bowler also alters the bowlers perspective and effects the lighting on the alley. Furthermore, even with changes such as these one still must unbolt the panel for removal.
Presently the cover panels attach to a support which lifts up from the bottom and locks in place in order to provide access to the pin setter. One may also then position ones selves under the now raised panel to accomplish the necessary bolting and unbolting in order to change the cover panel.
Accordingly, there does not exist in the industry an easy and effective way of building new, or retrofitting existing, bowling machine assemblies to provide a secure yet easily removable cover panel which would allow bowling alley owners greater variety in personalizing these cover panels or simply altering the esthetics of the bowling alley.